Throughout this campaign, Trump has managed to recast matters that would be considered liabilities in any other politician — any other human being, really — into enviable assets.
Trump has offered many excuses for not releasing his returns, contra 40 years of norms for major-party presidential candidates.
With any other political candidate, being under “continuous” audit would arouse suspicion.
(Just imagine, if you will, how the public might react to allegations that Hillary Clinton had been under “continuous” audit for 12 years.) And yet somehow Trump has fermented the usual sour grapes of an audit into a fine whine.
Both current and former IRS commissioners as well as countless tax experts have explained that this is not how audits work, that the IRS cannot target someone based on faith, and that even if he is under audit, such an action would not prevent him from releasing his tax returns.
Not only does Trump’s base give him a pass on his opacity, but he actually gets bonus points for being a beleaguered victim of the big bully IRS.
Lots of potentially damaging details, including his tax rate (which some have surmised could be as low as zero, given how the tax code treats real estate depreciation).
Traditionally, a low tax rate paid by a very rich candidate is, again, a political liability.
Whatever his tax rate, he has been prepping the voting public to view shortchanging the taxman as an achievement.
“I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible,” Trump said recently on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” echoing previous comments that he has employed “every single thing in the book” to grind down his IRS bill.
To Trump and his many supporters, paying little in taxes is not an effort to shunt more of the federal tax burden onto less wealthy Americans, as was the perception for Romney.
